They are all so much better.
Them, stringing words along deftly, confidentially, frequently—straight into the red-hearted world, ink-printed on
cozy slivers of trees, held with Sunday evening hands
and gazed with eyes careful not to drip tears.
They sip tea from cups with floating lemons,
or shot glasses sparkling with aged liquor,
maybe a chilled pint of small-town beer with a funky name.
And write. Write circles around me. Many circles around what
I’ve meagerly coughed up. Rings around my unprolific, shaky writing life.
They triumph through evening hours, mere will propels
them from rat race work days to wide-open creation,
fires an endless string of golden-lit words, and inevitable
award winning ribbons and book store reading nights.
Or they have become exempt from clock-punching somehow, free to spread
out their craft day long, earning enough money from their in-demand words to warrant
answering quality of life questions with "multi-splendored."
Oppositely, I sit hollowed out, eyes chapped, while Philadelphia middle relievers blow games.
I waste away nights cross-legged and loungy on the couch,
feeling soul-bruised and ever more a
technology damner, while time speeds on and the pen sits capped,
the machine stares blank-faced.
I dream up printed books bearing my name and an epic title.
I wonder about fonts, the art direction, the dedication page. But I sit,
after dinner, unable to drum up anything as music strums
from speakers. I’ve nothing to show most nights but an illegible
phrase or a half-thought scrawled on the back of a phone bill. I’ll never
know what that said in the disgruntled awake of morning.
They, these lauded wordsmiths, these purveyors of
championship poetry and prose, these oft-published professionals,
live on artist streets in shifting shadows of cityscapes or
small town college 'burgs, or any one of the millions of places that I've never
been, and write. Just write.
They master, with astonishing ability, the skill of
crafting strings of words from the wonders and fears of
their hearts. From the world-gaze and deep penetration of
their eyes. From the soft, exacting absorption of their skin.
They, I scribble in envy, are lucky enough -- no, work hard enough -- to be ensconced in whatever world and mindset provides those
ceaseless things you need to spin out the compelling, the well thought-out...
